Lawnmower Sends a Nail into Man's Heart

The next time the conversation turns to tough old guys, you might want to save a place on the list with John Wayne for 73-year-old Dale Carman, who had a nail embedded in his heart while mowing his lawn and told his wife it was only a flesh wound.

Carman, a big man, had been mowing his lawn Oct. 5 in Stony Brook, N.Y. on Long Island when he felt something hit him on the right side of his chest. “I was almost sure it was merely a stone thrown up, and at first maybe I’d probably got a cracked rib,” he said. “I mowed another 120, maybe 130 feet.” Then, he said, “I looked down and my shirt was completely covered with blood.

But instead of a rock, what hit him was a four-inch finishing nail that has gone completely into his chest cavity; with nothing protruding to pull out. The fact that it had found its way into his heart was nothing short of astonishing, said Dr. Todd Rosengart who would extract it during nearly two hours of surgery.

“To say this is one-in-a-million is understating it for sure,” Rosengart said. “I actually couldn’t believe this was possible, for a projectile to come up, strike right in the right place between the ribs,” and stop completely in Carman’s heart.